This project is exploring the geographical experience (defined as "the individual's involvement within the spaces and places of his life") of a panel of 12 elderly residents of a declining Appalachian community. Measures of four modalities of geographical experience -- action, orientation, feeling and fantasy -- are being developed and tested. The intention is to explore the interrelationships among these dimensions as they express the older person's adjustment to, and means of coping with environmental change. The research seeks to provide deeper understanding of the meshing of time and space in the experience of the contemporary environment and to develop grounded theory concerning the manner in which elderly people's experience of their environmental setting changes as they grow older. The initial research process is ethnographic and inductive, focusing on multiple minimally structured tape recorded interviews and the development of personal environmental histories. As the research progresses structrued interviews, time/space diaries and "mental mapping" exercises will be developed according to the capabilities of the participants. Data analysis will include content analysis and the development of descriptive and cartographic profiles to express the dimensions of the individual's geographical experience.